ART-ZIMBABWE: Local Artists Quench Foreign Tastes

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Morris Nyakudya

HARARE, Apr 28 1998 (IPS) - Every time a new art gallery opens in Zimbabwe, young painters here have another window through which to show the world their creative expression, but the window is far bright.

Zimbabwean artists say there is very little scope for them to create their own inspirations. Their art, the say, is dictated by the need to survive, and foreign tastes.

“There is a lot of economic pressure on the artist and that is dictating to a large extent what people do. It’s painful to admit it, but it’s there,” says Doreen Sibanda, owner of Mutupo Gallery. Zimbabwean artists produce work that “conforms to perceived market demand; not too provocative, not too ugly.”

Bulelwa Madekurozwa, a young Zimbabwean artist, agrees, adding that since it is foreigners who have the money to buy art, their taste for the untamed Africa is what artists dish out.

“Our buyers mostly are foreigners and they like to see Africans in huts and grass skirts, that kind of thing,” adds Madekurozwa, who last year won the prestigious Mobil Overall Award of Distinction in the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s Heritage Annual Exhibition.

This is why, Madekurozwa adds, there are a lot of paintings entitled ‘Women in the fields’, ‘Women carrying water’, ‘Women carrying firewood’. “There is not much room for exploring your own thing. You may need another job to do that”.

Madekurozwa who lectures in drawing and painting at Harare Polytechnic, the country’s main training school for fine arts, also says that most Zimbabwean artists are producing work just to earn a living.

“If you don’t sell, you don’t live, you don’t eat. A lot of the time you don’t produce what you would like to. And that gives foreigners a lot of power over what Zimbabwean art is,” says the 25 year-old artist, who is widely regarded as one of the leading torchbearers of Zimbabwe’s evolving art scene.

Zimbabwe’s international artistic reputation has been built on stone sculpture and, while not dismissing the value of this art form, Sibanda says it has been promoted to the exclusion of other forms of art. “Maybe that’s what the market demands and the international people who buy art have concluded that Zimbabweans can only use stone,” she says.

This situation marginalises many artists who do not conform. “I’m not prejudiced against stone,…I’m interested in creative art, whatever media the artist happens to use,” adds Sibanda, who exhibits paintings, sculpture and other art forms in her gallery.

Madekurozwa points out however that while many new galleries start off wanting to show paintings, they inevitably move to stone sculpture “because paintings do not sell…so there are few galleries showing paintings, pottery or anybody who does not do stone sculpture.”

Some galleries also try to tell the artist what to do, Madekurozwa adds, relating her own experience.

“I tried something once and handed it in to the National Gallery. They said, ‘oh, that’s not your style, that’s not the way you paint.’

“It was not shown, because it was supposedly not my style. Many gallery owners tell you that. They have too much power. For a lot of them, they think artists need them, and not the other way round,” Madekurozwa adds.

Both Sibanda and Madekurozwa believe that the galleries, artists and the society must work together to ensure that art reflects the story Zimbabweans want to see and tell. “As society develops, indigenous people will have a voice in art just like in other fields and will want to tell their own own story,” Sibanda says.

This is an irreversible process, which, however, needs to be complemented on the international stage by alliances with “people who are interested in real art and are knowledgeable about art,” Sibanda says.

“It is important for indigenous people to interpret their work locally and internationally.”